P is for Pensive Ponderings
by Undomiel5
Summary: There is a reason why heavy thinking should never be left for 2am in the morning: everything always seems more dismal. Sleepless after a nightmare, a pensive Asha considers her life in Wakanda and is troubled by a secret fear.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Black Panther (2018), Marvel Comics, or any Marvel characters or plotlines. All I own are a handful of original characters (created by me) and this story line.**

 **Author's Note #1: Please review. I always like hearing from readers and receiving constructive criticism.  
Author's Note #2: For those who are enjoying this series of stories (see my profile for a list of all my stories in this verse), if you have fic ideas or story prompts, I would love to hear from you. I can't guarantee that I will end up using any ideas, but I always enjoy have inspiration, especially when my fickle muse is being a pain.**

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June 2010  
Golden City, Wakanda

 _Leave! Never return._

 _Mutant spawn._

 _You do not belong here. You never did._

 _Freak!_

 _Outsider._

 _Monster._

Asha awoke with a start, a strangled scream dying in her throat and the fading wisps of a nightmare slipping from her mind. For a moment she was disoriented and unsure of where she was, half caught between the dream world and the waking world. Force of habit kept her body still, her breathing even, and her eyes half-lidded, mimicking sleep, but after a long moment, her roving gaze cataloged the familiar sights around her—the desk piled high with papers and intermixed with family pictures and gifts from Shuri, the large windows that looked out over the city, the bookcases filled with books on many subjects in many languages. Finally, she realized where she was: the bedroom she shared with T'Challa, her husband of not even two months.

Asha lay perfectly still for several minutes, trying to calm her pounding heart and listening to her husband breathe behind her. Somehow he hadn't been roused by her less than ideal awakening. For weeks after their marriage, they both had been roused frequently by the other's movements, even as simple as one rolling over, unused to having someone in bed with them. Asha had fallen asleep with T'Challa's arm around her waist and her back against his chest, but she had rolled away onto her stomach as she slept, and she could barely feel the brush of his fingers against her arm now. If they had been closer, Asha was sure he would have roused.

Once she was sure he hadn't awakened and wasn't about to, Asha quietly and carefully slipped from their bed. The clock on a small table by the bed, brought from her old apartment in New York, said it was just past 2am in the morning, but after that nightmare, she just knew she wouldn't be getting any more sleep that night. She padded across the room silently and slipped into her dressing room. Grabbing a thin shawl to cover her arms (her bed shirt had no sleeves), Asha swiped the door open and slipped into the hall.

Looking around, Asha saw no signs of the palace guard or the Dora Milaje who periodically made rounds throughout the palace during the night. She followed the halls until she came to the staircase that led down from the royal apartments to the main level of the palace. General Okoye, making her nightly round and security check, met her at the bottom of the staircase.

"Princess," she said with a nod of greeting, instead of a bow or a salute. Formality had its place, but not at 2am in the morning. "Is all well? It is early even for you to be up."

Unless she was injured, ill, or exhausted, Asha habitually rose early in Wakanda to run before breakfast. She liked running there. Even years after her first visit, there were so many new things to see, so many new paths to take. She didn't even have to vary her path every day for safety's sake unless she wanted to, and she finally had running partners who could keep pace with her.

"Everything is fine," Asha replied, matching the pitch of her voice to Okoye's in deference to the hour, "I can't sleep. I am going to go walk in the gardens."

Okoye's eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion or concern, but she nodded, "Very well."

The two women parted ways, and Asha made her through the winding hallways out into the gardens. The palace gardens were quite large and were filled with countless varieties of lush flowers, trees, and shrubs. Many walking paths led up and down through the gardens, providing an excellent view of the Golden City. After walking for five or ten minutes, Asha found a comfortable spot of grass under a tree that was within eye-shot of one of the main entrances back into the palace. Moments later, she saw one of the Dora take up a position by the door.

As she looked out over the Golden City at its towering spires lit by the moonlight, at the tracks for the Maglev Trains, at the quiet streets filled with people by day, Asha wondered again as she had done multiple times before how she could have become this blessed. In her heart of hearts, she still feared occasionally that she would wake up to find that this life in Wakanda with T'Challa and his family was all a dream.

A few years earlier before the fateful mission to Ethiopia where she took a bullet for the prince whom she hadn't known to be a prince, Wakanda as it really was would have sounded like a really cool sci-fi book or movie or possibly even a utopia. Now after living there, it seemed all the greater to Asha, a place where she did not have to worry about when her next meal would come (like she had during part of her childhood); a place where she did not have to be concerned about watching her back because of her gender, skin color, or genes; a place where non-mutant children were fascinated by her shape-shifting, instead of terrified; a place where she had gained a family to replace the one she had lost bit by bit over the years; a place where she was valued not because of her skill-set but because of who she was.

If this life was a dream, Asha hoped she never woke up. She had lost it all before and put herself back together again with help. She wasn't so sure she could survive another loss.


End file.
